Democrats received a mixed blessing in November when they seized complete control of state governments in California, Connecticut, Illinois and New York. They now own responsibility for fixing the dysfunctions of liberal governance even as the left wants more spending and taxes.
….
With legislative supermajorities, liberals in California can raise taxes without GOP votes and in Illinois place a progressive tax on the ballot as unions have long wanted. Democrats campaigned on more spending — for schools, roads, child care, you name it. But Illinois and Connecticut are spilling red ink while the progressive tax-and-spending structures in New York and California are profiting from the Trump economy while storing up future trouble.
….
The picture is no rosier in Connecticut where the economy has been shrinking for a decade as politicians have raised taxes again and again, driving out high earners and businesses. Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy reduced government pension costs by re-amortizing payments, but the result is pensions are no better funded than in Illinois. As revenue growth has flagged, the state faces a $1.7 billion budget hole next year with little flexibility to cut spending since Mr. Malloy locked in labor contracts with government unions through 2027.

While New York’s fiscal problems are less glaring, its taxpayer flight is also ominous. The state lost a net $8.6 billion in adjusted gross income in 2016 as high-earners fled for lower-tax climes. Growth has stalled upstate — half of upstate metro economies have contracted over the last five years — as residents have moved.

I am really not looking forward to having to pay the taxes for the baked-in costs, and I have not (yet) fled.

I am not sure I have a good place to flee to, after New York, because:
1. I like the cold
2. I much prefer the East Coast

The low-tax states on the EC are in places where I really don’t like the climate. Where I like the climate… it’s expensive to live. (Also, it’s where my main jobs live)

Hmmm.

Oh, and here’s a kicker:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won a third term and will be a fascinating study in political calibration. He once fashioned himself as a centrist and ridicules New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for proposing a millionaire’s tax to fund subway repairs. But as he prepares to run for President in 2020, he recently promised to extend the state’s current surtax on millionaires that he once opposed.

Okay. Somebody needs to get Cuomo’s head out from his ass.

NOBODYLIKESHIM.

Obviously, conservatives (such as me) dislike him. But seriously, that he is able to win elections in New York has nothing to do with anybody liking him. NY Democrats hate him, but don’t have anybody able to dislodge him (and it all has to do with nasty Albany crap).

In fact, I’m going to stake a claim: far more people like Hillary Clinton than like Cuomo. By orders of magnitude difference.

I’m not going to bother to look up the stats, but Cuomo is getting ready to waste a bunch of donor $$. Which would have been better making up for that almost-$9 billion loss in tax revenues in the state.

California Republicans are celebrating a rare political win in the state after regulators abandoned a plan to tax text messages.

The California Public Utilities Commission on Monday withdrew a proposal to levy a tax on text messaging plans, citing last week’s ruling by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that dealt the plan a blow.

In a ruling meant to protect consumers from text-messaging spam, the FCC determined that text messages are an information service, not a telecommunications service. That decision placed text services outside of the jurisdiction of state regulators.

….
The Bay Area Council, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group all were fighting the new tax, estimated to cost $44.5 million a year, although some worried that regulators would want to apply the tax retroactively for five years, amounting to a $220 million bill on consumers.

Industry groups, including the CTIA, which represents AT&T Mobility, Spring, and T-Mobile, also were lobbying against it, arguing that it put them at a competitive disadvantage to other messaging services including WhatsApp, iMessage, and Skype.

In a legal filing, CTIA dubbed the proposal “illogical, anti-competitive, and harmful to consumers.”

The CPUC announced the withdrawal of the text tax plan in a Monday [December 17] tweet, noting that last week’s FCC decision “limits state authority over information services.”

Actually, it's a modern version of the Lincoln-era Republican Party, which used its control of the White House and both houses of Congress to create the first federal income tax in the US in 1861 and establish the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1862. https://t.co/GESrsY038s